


our full three-score and ten

by orphan_account



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Breaking Up & Making Up, Headaches & Migraines, Injury Recovery, Internalized Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:29:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21724039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “You make things so fucking hard for yourself, kid.”“What the f–”TK kisses him, open mouthed and bad.
Relationships: Travis Konecny/Nolan Patrick, Travis Konecny/Other(s)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 355





	our full three-score and ten

**Author's Note:**

> This got weird and horny and sad. Either because I'm sad or nopats is... you decide. 
> 
> Title from The Mountain Goat's "Dilaudid" which I listened to a lot while writing this. 
> 
> Sorry for any grammar issues. Enjoy!

It’s dirty. So dirty. Except for how it’s innocent. How it’s just _buddies_. How it’s _married couple_, said straight into camera. How it makes perfect sense, and opposites attract, and every other worn thin cliché that’s hounded Nolan since he didn’t go first.

Mainly though it’s a hand heavy on the back of his neck, heavier than forty years of a city’s expectations. Heavier than _boys will be boys_, and _not buddies_, and _what are you looking at’s_. TK’s heavy hand leading Nolan nowhere, but god would he follow. He’d let TK bring him down to cracked knees, take the bruises gladly.

*

Nolan is good at hiding it, at hiding himself, but there are times when it feels like it’s not working around TK. Travis is like an open wound, the feeling of him is. Like there’s nowhere to hide and if there was Travis would pick it open anyway.

The problem is that Nolan can’t look without being caught. He flushes and looks away, and sometimes he thinks maybe TK is looking too. Stupid and hopeful but it gets worse all the time. TK talks about making him laugh, gives interviews about them like it’s nothing. Like it’s fine and normal, and maybe for him it is. Maybe this is what it’s like in the NHL and Nolan is the one fucking it all up, the way he fucks up everything these days.

But then there are nights when they sack out on the sofa, half-watching bad movies, and Travis pulls him over into his lap, pushes Nolan’s head into his stomach and just, like, plays with his hair. Nolan’s heart-rate skyrockets the first time it happens, and every time after, but he makes himself stay still. Lets himself stay there and enjoy whatever it is and thinks something stupid about how sometimes even part of what you want can be enough.

It’s not true. There’s a little part of him, the one that won’t let him imagine reaching over and pushing TK’s sweats down and seeing how far things could go, that knows there’s no way he could ever get enough. Not of Travis, not of this.

*

The first time is a shit show. A bad game, in stretch of bad games, in a bad season, Nolan playing like shit every night and no one picking up the slack. That’s a lie. TK is playing his heart out every night, sometimes the only one of them playing anything like good hockey and Nolan wants to scream in his face, or maybe just sit back and watch, catch any hint of reflecting light. Nolan wants and wants, can't sit still with the force of it.

A late night in a hotel room, nothing different from any other night, but Nolan is pacing and TK is just sitting there, watching, still in a way he never is. Eyes dark and trained on him, and Nolan wanted him to stop. And Nolan wanted him to never stop.

“Pats,” TK said. “Nolan. You need to relax.”

“_Relax_?” he half-yells, too late for it, all their neighbors already asleep, but Nolan can't keep that thought in his head, murderous rage in the face of TK’s calm. _Who the fuck was he to talk about relaxing. What the fuck did he know about Nolan_. Except he was awake when he didn’t have to be, keeping it together when Nolan couldn’t. And now he was standing, one heavy hand coming up to Nolan’s shoulder and then pushing further up behind the sweep of his hair.

“You make things so fucking hard for yourself, kid.”

“What the f–”

TK kisses him, open mouthed and bad**,** too fast and proprietary, tongue already in his mouth before Nolan could catch on. Except it wasn’t bad at all. He let himself be kissed, let himself get pushed onto the bed and would have let himself do a lot more, but Travis just kissed him, slowing down once he’d met no resistance. A slow, lush exploratory kiss, no teeth or sharpness but for the weight of his hand, now heavy at the base of Nolan’s throat.

Travis pulled away after Nolan had lost track of time, smiling down at him and Nolan said the only thing that came to mind, “what if I’m not good enough?”

TK laughs, “you’re a total smoke show. You’re the major leagues, baby. There’s nothing you aren’t good enough for.” Nolan lets himself be kissed.

*

They get better and then they get worse again. Travis stays the same, right on the cusp of greatness, and there are nights when Nolan thinks _if this is all I ever got, just to watch him from the bench, it would be enough_. Then he flushes, guilty.

Nolan lets his hair grow, only thinks about it consciously when he lets it fall in his face in front of cameras. That and when TK pulls it, and TK loves to pull. TK pulls and bites and scratches. Whatever Nolan tried not to think about, it wasn’t like this. The reality is better. The reality is harder to hide. If Nolan didn’t have so much practice wearing nothing on his face there would be nowhere to hide. When he comes to practice with scratches down his back, his lower lip bitten raw, the guys chirp and laugh but he doesn’t look at TK, doesn’t give the game away. 

He starts to play better, slowly. Things aren’t connecting and it feels like the wrong edge of a breakthrough but when the frustration starts to get to him TK is there. Travis lays him out, flat on his back, watches him squirm and doesn’t give an inch. Travis settles his bones and sometimes Nolan can’t remember what there is to be afraid of.

*

Travis comes over without texting first, but brings food and beer. Travis loses his shit on the ice every game, but stops Nolan from freaking out at home. Travis bullies him into the shower for sex, but just washes hair once there, gently running his hands through the strands and Nolan leans his whole weight into him, not thinking anything.

Travis is always there, always running his mouth, always pushing at Nolan, making him angry, horny, anything. Just pushing and not going anywhere. The seasons ends on a whimper and Nolan doesn’t feel like the world is ending. He has hockey, he has TK, whatever that means, and the rest will take care of itself.

Then the summer comes.

*

It doesn’t work out. Not when it’s Nolan.

*

He doesn’t tell TK. It’s easy not to because Travis really never looks at his phone except on planes. _Old man_. It’d be better to tell him in person anyway. Half of what he’s saying is in the way his hands land on Nolan, it would just be better to have that.

June stretches into July. August comes in hot and then there’s contract negotiations to keep everyone busy and Nolan stops pretending he’ll bring it up.

He has good days, quiet by the lake and long rides around it, calling TK when he gets in at 3am, half drunk and getting off on just the sound of his voice. But there are more bad days than there should be. He tells the front office and starts going to doctors. He keeps it together until he can’t. He cries himself to sleep when a loud fly gets into his room. He does his summer workouts, like he’s getting ready for the season, and nods his head to all the advice his asshole uncle keeps pushing at him. His mom pushes his hair back, says, “it’ll work out,” kissing his forehead.

Later he call TK and says, “talk. Just talk, _please_,” voice breaking embarrassingly on the last word. Falls asleep easy for the first time in weeks to the sound of TK saying a lot of nothing. He still doesn’t tell him.

*

Nolan knows how to be injured. He knows how to take it easy during the worst days and how to pace himself through the pattern of recovery. He knows how to look down at his scars and not flinch. You get ten years in hockey. Ten healthy years. Maybe more, if you’re lucky or good. Probably less. It’s a rough game. It’s brutal.

That’s not what this is. There’s nothing to look at here. There’s no pattern to adjust to and no milestones to reach. The bad days come abruptly and are gone just as fast. It doesn’t feel real when they’re gone. He doesn’t know what to say about it and people just keep pushing platitudes on him. From every side saying, “it’ll work out,” until he wants to scream, tear his hair out, tell them what he really thinks. Except he doesn’t know what that is.

He gets back to Philly, sits in his empty apartment, and wants TK worse than when he’d never had him at all. It’s pathetic in a way he doesn’t let himself be but he digs out TK’s spare key and rides out the next migraine in his bed. It doesn’t help, of course not. But when he wakes up two days later, crusty-eyed and sweaty, he lets himself pretend TK is in the next room making coffee. Then he goes upstairs and never does it again.

TK gets back to town a week later.

*

TK calls to say his contract is looking good, that he’ll be on the next flight. Nolan gets a haircut.

It takes three beers that he really shouldn’t have to get it out, but Nolan tells him about the migraines. Like most things with TK it's easier than he thought it’d be.

TK doesn’t say anything, not really. Doesn’t say all the wrong right things everyone else offers, and not any of the things Nolan half wants, half dreads to hear. He just runs his hands through Nolan’s short hair, down his neck, and says, “you’ll tell me what you need.” His voice goes up at the end but it’s not a question.

They go in for TK’s first day of the preseason, Nolan following two steps behind trying to weave out of sight of the cameras. TK is so happy and so loud. Making jokes with all the equipment guys, calling out the names of people Nolan has never even met. It’s nice to follow in his wake. Uncomplicated. Normal.

They go home after, stop for sushi on the way, then make out on TK’s couch. Nolan’s lips go tingly and his knees numb from kneeling at TK’s feet, but he doesn’t mind. TK pulls back to run hands through his hair, looks at him for one long moment and smirks, “it looks good short, eh. Really respectable.” Nolan bites at his thigh in retaliation, really bites, teeth digging in and leaving something behind. Then gets distracted at the sound TK makes.

That’s the last good day in a long time.

*

Nothing goes wrong that wasn’t already wrong, but Nolan feels newly broken when the season starts. The boys fly out of the country and it feels like a switch has flipped, silence falling worse than in the summer. TK plays well, and then better. Earns every cent of his contract and lets everyone see it.

_He’s better without you. He doesn’t need you. You’re holding him back. You’re a liability. You make him take care of you_.

Nolan stays in bed for a week. Nolan drops sugar, then caffeine, then dairy, then gluten, then stays in bed for a week and picks them all back up. Nolan sees doctors and specialists and trainers. Nolan gets another haircut and a new tattoo. Nolan misses his mom, TK, hockey, himself. Nolan crawls into his bathtub at two in the afternoon because the sheets are too hot and loud, leaking tears, feeling weak and broken. Wanting. Nolan doesn’t call TK, doesn’t tell him what he needs because who the fuck knows what that is.

After the home opener, it’s easy to pull back. He’s too much for anyone, TK deserves better. TK is demonstrably better without him. He goes out when the guys want to, but keeps his door locked. Lets the distance happen naturally and when TK’s hangdog eyes follow him he thinks about being eight years old, breaking in a new pair of skates and his dad telling him, “sometimes the pain is good for you.”

When he gets lonely he hangs out with Kevin. He’s loud but not the way TK is, TK wants the room watching, Kev just wants them happy. You play your favorite song for TK and he’ll listen and chirp you ‘til you’re fighting back, Kevin will put it in his favorites and tag you when he listens to it later. It’s nice.

They do the same things Nolan’s always done. Sit around with the Xbox, get dinner, show off the only parts of Philly he really knows. But when Nolan goes home, Hayesy doesn’t follow, and when Nolan goes silent he doesn’t push. TK never met a boundary he didn’t want to break through, and he never let Nolan get away with anything. It’s nice to be alone sometimes in his own head. It’s nice to be around someone who doesn’t know what Nolan is supposed to act like. But even Kevin notices, brings it up at full charge the way he does everything, uncomplicated and direct.

“I heard you and TK were tight.”

“We’re good buddies,” Nolan says, the way he always says. Careful and careless, safe.

“I don’t know, man, it just seems like–”

“What?”

“I don’t know, you just leave when he’s here. Like you’re not even in the room. Did something–”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You just act like, I don’t know, like he fucked your sister.”

Nolan starts laughing. Can’t stop. His starts breath catching, and his throat dries out. He leans over into a throw pillow to hide the tears leaking out. Kevin doesn’t say anything until he’s stopped. Even then it’s just, “you need a drink, buddy?”

Nolan loves him a little. Steady and uncomplicated. Wants to tell TK what a good guy he is. Then feels like shit again.

Nolan is weak and broken, and pulling back was supposed to be easy.

*

TK gets a girl. Shorter than him, pretty, nice. She smiles when she talks and has perfect shiny hair and Nolan walks out of the team Halloween party ten minutes after they walk in together. It’s stupid, he knows. It’s incriminating. He avoids eye contact, grabs his coat and leaves with it in his hands, can’t slow down enough to shrug it on. The backs of his hands itch, the top of his mouth hurts, every part of his body too tight and screaming at him.

_What did you think was going to happen?_ _What were you even doing in there? It’s not like you belong. It’s not like you belong with the team. With TK. With this life_. _You shouldn’t even be here_.

He’s on the street by the time he remembers he didn’t bring his car, some thought of Ubering home after a few drinks. That’s a lie. He’d thought about getting a ride home with TK. Falling into the back of a car with him, late enough that no one would look twice, pressed side to side, TK breathing against his forehead, mouthing at his throat. Then following him up to his floor, into his room, dropping their clothes and not having to say one damn thing to explain the silence.

He’d thought about last year when they skipped the party and lay on the couch watching bad horror movies and crushing bags of fun size candy bars, until sometime past midnight when TK had stood up facing Nolan, said, “come on,” and pushed his head to his dick. Nolan’s hands had fumbled at his waistband, he hadn’t been able to get his mouth open fast enough, and the TK from a minute ago, warm and soft in the curve of Nolan’s arm, was replaced by the TK that was a firm hand on the back of his neck, not letting Nolan back off an inch, not letting him think about anything. Nolan hadn’t wanted to be anywhere else then, hadn’t wanted to be anyone else. Nolan was enough. For a minute Nolan was okay. 

Now TK’s upstairs with someone else and Nolan is dropping his phone on a dark sidewalk at 9:30, hands shaking too badly to get the right app open.

“Hey, buddy,” Kevin’s hand comes down on his shoulder. Nolan nearly bites through his tongue, pushing back a scream. “You alright?”

“Don’t fucking touch me,” he snaps out. Regrets it watching Kev’s face drop but he can’t take it back. It’s not who he wants here. It’s not how he wants this to go. “Sorry. I’m sorry,” he mumbles. Doesn’t offer excuses.

Kevin picks up his phone, from where Nolan hasn’t managed to pick it up, looks at him for a long time and says, “you need me to get anyone for you?”

Nolan flushes hot. It’s the right question, of course it is. Kevin isn’t stupid. He’s noticed that Nolan is suddenly always at his place, that it’s not how things used to be. “No. I’m okay.”

Kevin watches him for another minute, Nolan looks away, then looks back, catches when he decides to let it go. “Your head hurt, buddy?”

He’s grateful and he’s bitter. He wants the excuse, but doesn’t want the acknowledgement, wants to face this head on and never have to think about it again. “Yeah,” a coward always takes the way out, “I’m not doing so great.”

Hayesy waits for the car with him, talks about nothing, lets Nolan sit in silence. When the car pulls up he says, too warm and weighty, “It’ll work out.”

Nolan smiles, “sure.”

*

It didn’t work out when he got re-injured two months before Worlds. It didn’t work out when he didn’t go first. It didn’t work out when his head hit the ice three weeks into his first season. It didn’t work out at fourteen when Abby Ross had a crush on him and all his friends laughed when she kissed him at her birthday party and Nolan didn’t feel a single fucking thing. It didn’t work out with TK.

It doesn’t work out. Not when it’s Nolan.

*

TK is having a career season. Nolan thinks about getting another tat. Thinks about getting Kevin’s interior decorator to do his place over. Thinks about giving up and going home. Never playing hockey again. He watches TK’s goal from the night before and a knot loosens low in his throat. There’s no way to watch him play and not be happy.

He starts skating with the team again, flies with them, does everything but play. It hurts when they win without him, worse when they lose. Watching TK dominate still hurts the best. Nolan keeps every thought off his face in the press box, then loses all composure watching TK get the helmet again in the room.

_This could be enough_. _But he doesn’t even need that from you_.

“Focus on the recovery,” everyone keeps saying. “It’ll work out.”

Nolan bites his tongue. Focuses. Focuses. Focuses with TK’s gaze heavy on his neck. TK doesn’t try to talk to him, he can take a hint. TK took the hint so well he got himself a girl. They look good together. Nolan stalks her Insta and sees exactly why TK likes her. He digs his nails into his palms, focuses on his recovery, doesn’t think about anything at all. 

Except for what it feels like to go second instead of first. To have glass bones. To be a waste of first round pick. To be too weak and too soft and a pussy and a _fag_.

He goes home and sleeps it off.

*

It can’t last because TK doesn’t actually know how to take a hint, because he never really lets anything go. It can’t last because he still gives those interviews where he talks about Nolan in the present tense, wears his heart too far out of his chest and doesn’t seem to care that everyone can see it.

It can’t last because Nolan is weak and broken. Because he wants. He can’t handle how he wants.

*

It lasts right up until Nolan talks to the press. He stands at his stall with sweat cooling on his neck, a half-moon of phones and cameras in his face, and it feels so much like what he wants, and nothing at all like it. He feels good, right up until he starts talking. When they leave he sinks back to sit, lets his hair fall into his eyes, and there’s not enough of it so he throws his palms up too.

“Well that’s the worst part done,” TK says, right up against the side of his face, too close.

Nolan flinches, says, “fuck you, Teeks,” voice cracking on a sob.

TK laughs, still too close, anyone could see, and he’s hiding behind the curtain of his hair but what good does that do. “You’ve got some nerve, bud. Some fucking nerve.”

“What the hell is that supposed to–”

“You don’t talk to me for _months_ and that’s what you open with? Well, fuck you too, Patty.”

“I didn’t–”

“Don’t fucking lie. Not to me, you can’t. G said to give you some space, so I did. I thought he knew what he was talking about, my mistake. Sorry about that.”

There’s a pattern to their fights: Nolan yelling and red-faced, TK basking in it. TK doesn’t really get angry off the ice, and even then it’s mostly for show. He likes the fight, likes the lead up to it, but there’s nothing in him that takes it personally. He laughs too much for anything else. He’s not laughing now. He sounds serious, the way he only does when he fucks up and knows it. Nolan shudders out a breath.

“Hey. No. Look at me.”

Nolan can’t lift his head, feeling tears leak into his palms. Travis pulls at his hair, right there in front of half the locker room, a camera, and god knows who else.

“You make things so fucking hard for yourself, kid.” Nolan wants to laugh, wants to run away.

“You’ve said that before,” he says instead, absurdly proud of getting out a sentence.

“Yeah well I think it every time I look at you.”

Nolan forgot, tried not to remember, how TK does honesty. Once he gets going, there’s no stopping him.

“You can do anything. You could show up with just that face and people would give you shit. And you’ve got a ton of talent on top of it. You don’t have to work at it, if you don’t want to. You could coast through an easy life. Even with the hits. Even with your head. But you make things so fucking hard for yourself.”

The room fades away, Nolan counts his breathes, tries to keep it easy. Then he tells the truth.

“You’re the only thing that’s ever been easy for me."

*

Nolan drops to his knees.

“Tell me what you think you need,” TK says in that late night flight, early morning driving voice. Not the mile a minute standard, not TK catching everyone’s attention and keeping it voice, but his Nolan voice.

Before that, Nolan drives himself home, gets in the shower even though he cleaned up at the rink. Counts to a thousand three times and TK still isn’t back when he gets out. Months he kept himself occupied and now he can’t handle an afternoon.

He’s sitting on the sofa, fucking around on his phone when TK gets back. He’s a little red around the eyes, cold coming off him in waves like he walked farther than just in from his car.

“I broke up with her,” he says.

“I’m sorry.”

“Well you should be. She was great. So hot. And fun.”

“I’m sorry. You didn’t have to–”

“Bullshit. You know, Patty. You have to know.”

Nolan doesn’t know what to say, what do with his hands.

“I’d rather sit here miserable with you than have the best time with anyone else.”

Nolan sighs. Drops to his knees.

*

“Go on. Tell me what you think you need,” TK says, a smile curled in the far left corner of mouth.

Nolan bites his lip so hard it bleeds. Travis pushes the blood into his mouth, pushes farther, fingers edging at the back of his throat.

“Tell me everything will work out,” he says when he can breathe.

“No.”

“What?”

“No, I can’t say that. I’m not going to lie. Maybe it doesn’t.”

He’s barely done blinking tears out of his eyes, when they start again. Faster this time, spilling across his hot cheeks. No one ever says it, no one has ever said it. Not even Nolan. Travis gets down on the floor with him, wiping his face, kissing at his temple.

“Baby–”

“I don’t know what to be without–” _hockey. You. This. I don’t know what to be._ He swallows hard. Makes himself start again. “Then what happens? If I can’t– if I don’t– what happens?”

“You stay here. With me.”

Nolan makes himself laugh. “Yeah? And what? Be your fucking–”

Stops.

“Come on. Say it,” TK says, goading.

“Fuck you.”

“Come on, baby, say what you’d be.”

“Your whore.”

TK laughs, “that’s not what you were going to say,” a singsong lilt across the words.

He flushes, hot. TK softens, hands coming up to Nolan’s hair.

“You’d stay here with me, and you’d be mine. Which you already are.”

*

It’s dirty. So dirty. Except for how it’s innocent. How it’s dinner every night at the same time, getting driven to another round of doctors’ appointments, falling asleep with TK’s arm low at his waist. How no one ever says anything, but sometimes they look too long and Nolan has to put on his coldest face. How Nolan is always flinching from a question that never lands.

How maybe it doesn’t work out. How maybe it falls apart and everything gets fucked up, but at least it happened. At least there was something more for a while. At least Nolan wanted TK, and got him.


End file.
